Lack of vitamin made Gollum a loser
缺乏維他命讓「咕嚕」淪為失敗者

Fans are dressed as characters of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic The Hobbit in a forest in northern Czech Republic on May 25 last year.去年五月二十五日，J.R.R.托爾金著作《哈比人》書迷們在捷克北部一處森林，扮裝成書中人物。

Photo: AFP照片：法新社

Think kindly of the dragon Smaug. Shed a tear for Gollum, and give an orc a hug.

If only they had tucked into the occasional quiche and salad or a touch of smoked salmon, or had a few sessions on a sunbed, how much kinder history would have been to them.

So suggests an offbeat study which concludes that the evil characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit lost their battle against men, elves and dwarves because they suffered from vitamin deficiency.

Shunning sunlight, surviving on a sketchy or unbalanced diet based on rotten meat, they lacked vitamin D, a key component for healthy bones and muscle strength.

The idea is proposed by Nicholas Hopkinson, a doctor at Imperial College London and his son Joseph.

They scoured The Hobbit for references to characters’ living conditions, habits and diet. They used these clues to rate each character for levels of vitamin D, produced when the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light or derived from foods such as oily fish, egg yolks and cheese.

Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit, had a vitamin D-enriched life, they found. True, Bilbo lived in a hole, but it had windows and he enjoyed sitting in the sun in his garden.

In contrast, the villains spend most of their time in darkness, and their diet is poor or single-sourced.